Best Designer (2005)

Kirk Markley for Orange Flower Water

Kirk Markley's set for Craig Wright's Orange Flower Water was not beautiful -- it was devastating. The script told the tale of badly behaving married folks, most notable for their ordinariness. And Markley's set, with its looming backdrop of to-the-rafters metro shelving, captured the terrible banality of their suburban world. Stacked along the metal shelves were toilet paper, a pair of shoes, a teapot, towels -- the stuff of dull daily life. These details, wrought from the detritus of living a middle-class life, brought Wright's story of infidelity home. They made it real, almost too real for comfort. And at center stage stood a bed, sprawled like a battlefield, where the players fought. It became the central, unforgettable image of Wright's domestic war story.